Advanced Frameworks in Trans Affirming Therapy
Beyond Inclusion. Advanced Frameworks for Trans Affirming Therapy.
A lot of guidance and training online covers very foundational principles. This training goes well beyond that, because trans people deserve more than just basic inclusion and respect.
If you’ve ever wished you had clearer strategies for supporting trans clients, especially when it comes to dysphoria, internalised transphobia, or navigating a cis-normative world, this course is for you.
The Dysphoria Relief Framework gives you practical, evidence-informed strategies to confidently guide your clients through the internal and external challenges they face. It’s designed for therapists who want to offer much more than just inclusion - For those who want to offer trans-focused therapeutic space that is transformative and healing.
What's Included
- 5Â Core Modules
Immediately available, pre-recorded, self-paced video lessons.
Small Bites: Each module is broken into short, digestible lessons you can watch over lunch or between sessions.
- Q&A Library
Optional in-depth answers to the questions that 100+ practitioners have asked - categorised by topic.
- Resources
No note-taking required:Â Downloadable visual frameworks, guides and summaries.
- Discounted add-ons
- Working with Parents of Trans Clients
- Ethical WPATH Letter Writing
- 12 Months Access
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We’ve found—and research supports this—that unlimited access often leads to low completion. A time limit helps you stay focused and actually benefit from the training.
Course Outline
This groundbreaking course will provide you with frameworks, concepts and strategies formed over a decade of personal experience, clinical practice and research.
They are each roughly 90-minute, broken up into easy to consume shorter videos.Â
Module 1
Supporting Gender Questioning Clients
Having a clear model for gender identity formation will allow you to support clients in the earlier stages of the gender awareness and affirmation process.
- How do we help clients who are asking, "what am I?"
- How necessary is identity language?
- What are the common stuck points and how do you help clients continue to grow and heal.
Module 2
Working With and Alleviating Dysphoria
Understand the cause of gender dysphoria and our 3-part framework for dysphoria relief, so that you can:
- Support clients to reduce the factors in their life leading to dysphoria distress
- Help clients understand their inner process and triggers
- Explore ways to reduce dysphoria in the moment
- Work towards meaningful alleviation
Module 3
Emotional Safety and Relationship to Living
- How do we support clients in a harmful political and social context?
- What are the real and under-estimated risks to safety that no one is talking about?
- How can we respond to clients when they experience direct transphobia.
- Why do so many trans people struggle to envision a future for themselves, and say they "don't feel like a real person"?
In this module you will learn what to listen for, and the most effective interventions, to increase safety from survival to wellbeing.
Develop a map of risk and resilience that you can track with each client to know what aspects of their life cause them real harm and what aspects are missing that will increase their resilience in the face of challenges.
Module 4
The Real Purpose of Gender Affirmation
Support clients as they make choices for their own greater wellbeing and towards authentic connection with themselves and others.
Understand the concept of 'gender affirmation' in a new way that will allow you to offer meaningful reflections and support to your clients, wither they are thinking about transitioning or years down the track.Â
Module 5
Bringing it all together
 Bringing the course concepts together, we will talk about internalised transphobia and how to support clients towards 'trans healing'.
What Practitioners Are Saying
Meet Your Trainer
Hi, I'm Ari Heart (they/them).
I am a psychotherapist, educator, parent, trans non-binary person, and co-founder of Trans Wellbeing.
I have been supporting trans people and their families to navigate the various stages of their journeys for many years.
When I began working with trans clients, I quickly realised that lived experience wasn’t enough to guide me in working with other trans and gender diverse people.
I created this training to give therapists the frameworks I wish I had when I began this work. Because inclusion isn’t enough.
When sitting with a client in tears about their struggle with body dysphoria, I could offer presence and empathy, but I felt ill-equipped to help in other ways.
I felt sure that there must be more to know, and I just could not find the information I wanted. The existing guidelines and standards of care didn’t offer the granularity, nuance, theoretical underpinning, or the strategies I wanted. Mostly, they re-iterated similar principles about inclusion and respect – something I felt was setting the bar too low for where I wanted to take my practice and how strongly I wanted to help my clients.
It took me many years and hundreds of clients before I started to develop the frameworks I use today to help my clients experience transformative healing in their relationship to their gender and body, and often within just a few sessions.Â
My personal experience as a non-binary trans person informs the depth of care I bring to this work, but it is the many thousands of hours of conversations with trans people and their families that has built much of the purpose and content of our programs.
I am grateful to all the people I have worked with, who have taught me many things; not least the imperative and courage of authenticity and connection.